Project summary
Findings
Twitter data
Twitter data was obtained freely through a partnership between UCSB Library and Crimson Hexagon. Before downloading, the data was queried to meet the following conditions:
Crimson Hexagon only allows 10,000 randomly selected tweets to be exported, manually, at a time in .xls format. Due to this restriction, data was manually downloaded for every 2 days in order to capture all tweets. There were around 5000 average number of daily tweets that met these conditions.
The Crimson Hexagon data did not contain all desired information, including whether or not the tweet was geotagged. To get this information we used the python twarc library to “rehydrate” the data using individual tweet ids and store the tweet information as .json files. From here we were able to remove all tweets that did not have a geotag, giving us a total of 82,876 tweets.
Here is a sample of the type of the final twitter information we obtained.
| created_at | tweet_id | full_text | user_id | user_location | geo_type | geo_coordinates | language | retweet_count | favorite_count | lat | lon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu Oct 25 15:11:03 +0000 2018 | 1.055477e+18 | #tbt to five years ago today… 🎉 Flutter Magazine Issue No. 1 was hot off the press in Santa Barbara, California. It’s been a whirlwind 5 years of beautiful, creative, inspiring,… https://t.co/EdTLt2GgWb | 1252883832 | Los Angeles, CA | Point | c(34.4258, -119.714) | en | 0 | 1 | 34.42580 | -119.7140 |
| Sat Jul 16 03:38:59 +0000 2016 | 7.541584e+17 | Just posted a photo @ Santa Barbara County Courthouse https://t.co/MF508KDQJM | 136403690 | U.S.A, CA, Santa Barbara. | Point | c(34.42435, -119.702461) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42435 | -119.7025 |
| Fri May 08 18:29:38 +0000 2015 | 5.967438e+17 | Mama 2 years ago today we said goodbye to you, missing you doesn’t get easier but I thank you & God… https://t.co/wOEYZ8uZlv | 362204954 | Ventura, California | Point | c(34.38814401, -119.51557072) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.38814 | -119.5156 |
| Tue Feb 07 20:41:18 +0000 2017 | 8.290675e+17 | Staring this Friday, Feb. 10 we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day all weekend long at… https://t.co/PfPwMpJPTG | 2683395770 | 131 Anacapa Street, Suite C | Point | c(34.41468768, -119.69030981) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.41469 | -119.6903 |
| Sun Apr 16 18:10:02 +0000 2017 | 8.536718e+17 | Just uploaded 1 new photo to my Flickr “Project 365 - 2017” photoset: https://t.co/57o9JQRfZu https://t.co/afxuApScUE | 35313007 | Santa Barbara, CA USA | Point | c(34.4239533, -119.705) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42395 | -119.7050 |
| Fri Sep 23 01:56:06 +0000 2016 | 7.791372e+17 | Baby’s toes touch the ocean for the 1st time! Maybe it’s a little too cold mom! @ Carpinteria… https://t.co/CP78rpyODP | 44481856 | Los Angeles, CA | Point | c(34.39361076, -119.52207238) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.39361 | -119.5221 |
| Tue Sep 22 20:27:41 +0000 2015 | 6.464206e+17 | Pink petal portrait of a pal. @ Los Arroyos https://t.co/1FBxohUqlW | 575553178 | Fort Worth, TX. | Point | c(34.4216499, -119.6411819) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42165 | -119.6412 |
| Tue Apr 14 22:48:57 +0000 2015 | 5.881117e+17 | I don’t feel like a freshman | 156529750 | Santa Barbara, CA | Point | c(34.41214016, -119.85574636) | en | 0 | 1 | 34.41214 | -119.8557 |
| Thu Oct 31 19:38:33 +0000 2019 | 1.189990e+18 | Have you downloaded our mobile app yet? Been getting amazing feedback! Easily book haircuts and earn stamps for free stuff you already love buying. Free pomades, headwear t-shirts and more! Link is in our bio.… https://t.co/gOMHMlXRme | 2831364296 | 27 1/2 E Vivtoria St. Santa Barbara CA | Point | c(34.42940389, -119.86914428) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42940 | -119.8691 |
| Thu Apr 06 15:33:08 +0000 2017 | 8.500085e+17 | Oh and all art is 15% off!! #homeiswheretheartis @ Clothesline… https://t.co/oxflNojb3d | 23015697 | santa barbara | Point | c(34.3987999, -119.5188217) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.39880 | -119.5188 |
The spatial distribution of tweets highlights areas of higher population density and tourist areas in downtown Santa Barbara. There is a single coordinate that has over 11,000 tweets reported across all years. It is near De La Vina between Islay and Valerio. There is nothing remarkable about this site so I assume it is the default coordinate when people tag “Santa Barbara” generally. The coordinate is 34.4258, -119.714.
As you zoom in on the map, clusters will disaggregate. You can click on blue points to see the tweet.